Defiance Page 17

  You need a better plan, Dru.

  One started to take shape as I paid the bill and hit the streets. I kept moving, and it evolved inside my aching head. Here I was, two malaika strapped to my back and a long black coat wandering around, and nobody paid any attention. True, it was night in the city, and there were weirder things than me on the street.

  Most of them were even human.

  Some of it could have been the touch throbbing inside my head, keeping me moving. I heard soft wingbeats through the crowd noise and sometimes caught a glimpse of the owl. Perched on a blinking Girls Girls Girls sign, circling at the end of a street, floating down to land on the hood of a parked car. I even caught it filling itself out like a charcoal sketch with quick strokes, leading me in a wandering zigzag pattern that kept me away from trouble, and also away from the green quiet of Central Park, vaguely north and east for a little while.

  All this time I’d thought it was Gran’s owl. But now I felt the beat of its heart and the wind through its feathers, and I knew it was a part of me. Just like I’d known in the gym facing Anna. When the owl had hit her animal aspect, the tortoiseshell cat crouched at her feet, with the sick crunch of continents colliding.

  So I’m an owl, Christophe is a fox, and Anna’s a cat. And Graves is loup-garou. Funny.

  Only it wasn’t.

  Sometimes flashes of that night come back to me, mostly when I’m trying to fall asleep and I get that weird sense of falling. I’ll jolt awake, expecting to be on the pavement again, sliding past groups of hard-faced young men on corners or melding with a flow of tired adults flooding down subway steps, seeing my reflection—pale cheeks, hair pulled back, the twin hilts of the malaika poking up over my slim shoulders, the coat flapping around my ankles. I hung around the edges of the Pier raves for a long time, moving in aimless circles as trance and electronica throbbed through the air, then sometime after three I slid through the quiet of Battery Park like a ghost and started working my way north and east, cutting around the Schola Prima’s slice of Manhattan like it had plague. Risky to stay this close, but again, the last place they’d look for me.

  I ate a couple more times, too. It was like I couldn’t get full, and I was always finding those carts that sell pretzels or chicken satay or burritos, especially near Midtown. I wasn’t worried about money; I was worried about the huge hole under my ribs that just kept getting bigger. When I turned onto deserted streets I could hear a little crackling, like static. It was coming from under my skin, and I wasn’t sure if I should be worried.

  I moved with the crowds through the arteries of the city. Safety in numbers, and I liked the hustle and bustle. Even in the dead of night, something was happening somewhere. This is why the Real World hunts mostly in cities. I mean, there’s rural Real World, too, but it’s a different flavor. The nastier, sharper-edged stuff lives in the urban jungle.

  The worst hours were between three and five in the morning while I was walking with vague intention, the long slow hush before dawn. I wandered around, pretending Dad was picking my plan apart, making it as good and solid as I could and hoping I’d covered everything.

  Back at the Schola it would be time to tuck Ash in and retreat to my room, let Nat brush my hair, and look forward to Christophe knocking on the door. I got antsy, working my way across the river toward Queens, and stopping every once in a while as the ghost of waxed oranges slid across my tongue. That was another thing to worry about—the aura wasn’t as strong. Everything else was, but the danger candy was only a ghost of itself, and I couldn’t think it was because I was safer.

  I found a working phone booth about twelve blocks from the mansion. It was harder than it sounds—now that there’s cell phones, the pay ones are going out of style in a big way.

  Dad groused about that sometimes. It wasn’t any harder to get an untraceable cell phone, but there was still the problem of triangulating from the towers that receive the call. Not really any worse than a pay phone, but Dad was old-school.

  My heart made a funny ripping motion inside my chest, but I was too busy to worry about the pain. Story of my life. If I ever slowed down all the crap piling up would make me cry for a week, probably.

  I plugged in quarters—I had plenty of those, though I’d given the rest of my change away—and dialed. Normally I keep numbers in my Yoda notebook, not my head. But this one I’d fallen asleep reciting for a while because it was my personal drop line for the Order, the number that would light up their switchboard like a distress flare.

  Which meant that the call would be traced. After all night keeping to the shadows and hoping nobody would catch me, I was about to say here I am, come get me.

  I listened to it ring, cleared my throat, and tried to look everywhere at once. The street was a nice one, this particular convenience store across the street from Flushing Park’s bruised green in good shape and the lines in the parking lot freshly painted. All the trash was picked up, and it didn’t smell like old-man urine, which meant this was a Relatively Nice Part of Town.

  I guess when you’re near a graveyard, nice is relative.

  Two rings. Three. Four. It picked up, and there was a series of clicks. Then, silence while they started tracing my location.

  “Goddammit,” I said to the listening quiet. “Say something.”

  “Dru.” Augustine sounded incredibly weary. “What the hell you doing?”

  What do you think? “Rescuing Graves. Christophe knows where. Have him bring backup. I’m going in at first light, which is—” I checked the sky. “Very soon. The more they distract whoever’s holding my Goth Boy, the safer I’ll be.”

  “Dru-girl, sweetheart, listen to me. Something’s going on. You’re in trouble, and—”

  “Damn right I’m in trouble, August. I’ve been going along trusting Christophe, and all he does is lie to me. I’m done. If the Order wants anything out of me, they’ll do what I tell them, starting right now. And what I’m telling them to do is to get Christophe to admit he knew where Graves is. And to come and help me rescue him. Otherwise they’re going to be out one more svetocha.” I wet my lips with a quick nervous flick of my tongue, watching the street. The sky was turning gray in the east; I could feel dawn approaching as if a thousand little tiny threads were pulling against my flesh. The crackling under my skin was intense, almost to the point of pain.

  “Please, Dru. Please just listen—” Now Augie was pleading with me, the way he never had when I lived with him. Of course, I’d been young then. He hadn’t had to plead; he’d just told me what to do and I did it.

  Screw that. I was about to start misbehaving in a big way.

  “I ain’t listening to jackshit,” I informed him, every inch of me alert. For the first time, I heard the ghost of Dad’s slow sleepy accent in my voice. “I listened for a long time and got nothing but lied to, Augustine. You go tell them. Or maybe they’re listening and they already know.” I recited the address, reeling it off like I was right in front of it. “I’m going on in, and I’m getting Graves. If you guys want to come play, fine. If not, then kiss your svetocha goodbye.”

  I hung up. Hung on to the phone, shaking. My legs were rubbery. I lifted my hand and heard the crackle again. Little things moved in my wrist, popping and sliding. The bones were shifting. Kind of like a wulfen’s when they go into changeform, but with a queerly musical tinkle to it. Like bells.

  Holy shit. I swallowed hard. I had a plan, and I had to stick to it.

  I stepped out of the booth’s three-quarter enclosure and sniffed. Smelled nothing but car exhaust, wet green from the trees and lawns, and the dirty smell of a city. People jammed together like rats, except out in this piece of town the holes were nicer. Still, out here the mansion would have smaller homes pressing against its walled grounds, trying to get in. Property values out here were probably enough to give people heart attacks.

  I sniffed again. There was a faint breath of rotting.

  Nosferat. There were suckers in the neighborhood.

&
nbsp; There was a thin thread of cinnamon, too, weaving under all the other smells and tying them together. Not tinted with apples, like Christophe, or carnation-flowery, like Anna. This was like big gooey cinnamon buns, and it reminded me of my mother’s warm perfume.

  That was the wrong thing to think. Because it made the night much bigger and darker, pressing between the streetlights and against the store’s fluorescent glare. Even though dawn was coming, it was still awful dark.

  A snap-ruffle of muffled wingbeats, and the owl coasted in. It landed on the gas station’s sign, mantled once, and looked at me. Blinked one yellow eye, then the other. Its talons skritched a little, a small sound under the drone of faraway traffic, the murmur of the city, and the thrumming at the very edge of my consciousness.

  The touch slid free of my head. Uneasy static, a thunderstorm approaching. I tasted wax oranges, but only faintly. A brief glass-needle spike of pain through my head, and I was back in myself, staring up at the owl like it was going to tell me something.

  Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. But still.

  I reached up to touch the skull-and-crossbones earring. My mother’s locket was a chip of ice against my breastbone, safe and snug under my T-shirt and hoodie. Graves’s coat flapped around my ankles in the uneasy breeze. Goose bumps spread over me. The air itself was electric.

  Come on, Dru. Time to do the throwin’ down, not just the starin’ down.

  I headed for the edge of the parking lot. The owl called softly, but when I glanced up it had taken off, a soft explosion of feathers.

  I stepped out of the light and into the darkness before dawn. Twelve blocks to the mansion they were holding Graves in, if they hadn’t moved him.

  Then it was showtime.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Things went okay enough for the first few minutes. I dropped down on the other side of the high brick wall and didn’t immediately glance up to see what Dad was doing. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be out at night, sneaking around somewhere the Real World was rubbing through the fabric of the everyday.

  No. I hadn’t forgotten. I’d just forgotten what it felt like to do this with Dad, him taking point and me doing backup and sweep–behind. The comfort of knowing that I just had to wait for orders and let training do the rest.

  A thin film of rotten, waxed oranges slid over my tongue. I swallowed hard, the aspect smoothing down over me in deep waves of sensation. Christophe had marked this entrance in red pencil on the satellite photos, along with a couple other routes.

  Always planning ahead. Had he thought I’d never find out?

  The thing was, I still flushed hotly, thinking of him. Thinking of his hands in my hair and the lightning that went through me whenever—

  My grandmother’s owl hooted softly, sharply. Consciousness of danger prickled under the surface of my skin. The shifting in my bones retreated, silence filling my flesh.

  I faded back into the shrubbery lining the wall. My breathing came soft through a wide-open mouth, my right hand reaching up and curling around a malaika’s warm wooden hilt. I felt a pair of nosferat pass, a drift of bad drain-smell and hatred sending glass pins through my temples.

  That’s the thing about suckers. They hate so much. I don’t understand it. It’s not like they have a monopoly on hate—human beings have a big chunk of the market, and other Real World stuff has its slices of the pie too—but a sucker’s hate is so intense, and it clouds around them like dust around that kid in the old Peanuts cartoons. The one who was always filthy.

  I didn’t blink, I didn’t move. The aspect made it easier, and I suddenly understood how the older djamphir fell into that spooky immobility. It was so easy, a stillness enfolding the entire body like a cradling bath, the world moving past on a slow river. My concentration turned fierce and one-pointed, and all Gran’s training seemed like kid games.

  Two more suckers, patrolling. They smelled male, and peppery with excitement. The touch whispered in my head, averting their notice. Gran’s owl called again, but neither of them noticed. One made a low aside in some consonant-filled foreign language, their shapes blurred like ink on wet paper, and the other one laughed before they vanished with a tiny, nasty chattering little sound.

  Man, I hate that. I hate it when djamphir do it, too.

  I studied the house a little more. It was a big sprawling brick monstrosity, looking for all the world like a square red-brown fungus had suddenly got drunk, smoked crack, and decided to stack itself up to impersonate a mansion. It was dark, a dark the coming morning probably wouldn’t penetrate very far. I didn’t have to think about where I’d seen this sort of miasma before.

  It had been back in the Dakotas, under a snowy sky with Graves in the truck right next to me. Going to meet Sergej.

  Christophe had saved us then. Or, more precisely, saved me. Like he was always doing.

  Like I was counting on him to do now.

  A complex, tangled wash of feeling slid over me like the aspect. I was counting on him an awful lot here.

  Just as I thought it, I heard the thwap-thrum of a helicopter. It got louder and louder, and the fungal mansion took a breath. Like a lion smiling right before it gets up.

  Let’s hope this goes well, Dru.

  I slid out of the bushes, thin danger candy waxing and waning on my tongue. Creeping along, each foot placed silently, my right hand still awkwardly up, clasping the malaika’s oddly warm, satin-smooth hilt. The path marked with red pencil took advantage of every bit of cover, and about halfway to the house I paused, something nagging inside my head.

  You’re in terrible danger, Dru.

  Well, duh. But Graves was also, and he was in this house. Who knew what they were doing to him? I had a chance now to—

  “Svetossssssssssssha . . .” It was a hiss, off to my right. A cold, lipless, hate-filled voice. “Little svetossssssha, come out and play.”

  All hell broke loose.

  A high scream cut short on a gurgle came from the other side of the mansion, and the night was suddenly full of noise and motion. Geysers of dirt exploded up, black scarecrow forms leaping free and bits of grass flying. I tugged sideways on the malaika hilt, a motion I’d practiced so many times with Christophe it was now natural, like loading a gun. My left hand flashed up, closed around wood, but I wasn’t ready when the first sucker leapt for me, its narrow teenage face contorted. His hair stood up in dead-black spikes, rubbing against each other with little squealing sounds, and I had my right-hand malaika free, the edge cleaving air with a gentle whistle lost under the chaos.

  Bloodhunger lit up inside every vein in my body. I felt it, as if the map of my circulation had just been filled with electricity. The aspect flared, my fangs dug into my lower lip, and I slashed—

  —but the curved edge just slid through empty air because the sucker dropped in midleap, clutching at his throat like he had a rock lodged in there. He curled up like a pillbug, but I was already past. I’d expected him to hit me and flung myself forward. Landed hard, sneakers digging into soft-churned earth, the left-hand malaika free and whirling like a propeller.

  I was already in second form, Christophe’s voice echoing in my head. Knee! Keep your knee in line! Think of the whole edge, not just the point; for God’s sake, kochana, keep your back straight! It was like hearing Dad’s barks while on the heavy bag, an unwilling comfort.

  The scarecrow shadows leapt at me, and I almost panicked. Fangs glowing ivory and champing, foam spraying from their reddened lips, their hair standing up as their version of the aspect crackled through them, the suckers moved in with that unholy speed. The world slowed down, the clear plastic goop that was my own super-speed kicking in hardening on every surface, the malaika whirring outward in the two great defense-movements in second form, which is the beginning of the one-against-many. First form is to build your speed and precision; second through eighth form are all about being the underdog; eighth through thirteenth are the solo combat forms.

  I’d b
arely begun on third form. But Christophe also said that mastery lay in the first two, that if you practiced only those, you would have the essence of all of them. He took me through them every night before sparring, over and over again—

  Quit thinking about him and start paying attention!

  I hop-skipped forward, weight precisely balanced, and the malaika bit preternatural, stone-hard flesh. But it wasn’t the wooden swords that did all the asskicking. As a matter of fact, I might as well not have had them.

  Because the scarecrow vampires seemed to hit an invisible force field. The bloodhunger flexed inside my veins each time, and the suckers crumbled, choking and gagging. One of them fell before I even hit him, clutching at his throat.

  Looked like I’d finally become toxic to suckers. In a big way.

  Toxic enough that Sergej can’t get to me? That’d be real nice. I leapt forward again, my feet landing as if I was running with the wulfen in Central Park’s dappled light and shade, my heart in my mouth and the world rolling underfoot while I popped from place to place like a girl playing hopscotch.

  But if Sergej had been able to endure my mother’s toxicity for long enough to hang her in the oak tree outside that yellow house—

  Dad’s yell snapped me to attention. Focus on what you got in front of you, Dru! The malaika whistled, I was moving so fast. Suckers fell, gasping and choking, I hit the small wooden door on the side of the house like a bomb and was through, splinters flying so fast they embedded themselves in the wall opposite. Spinning on a dime, my left-hand malaika flicking out like a snake’s tongue.

  This sucker was more durable. He was choking as the blade sheared through his right leg, and it was a good thing I’d ducked because his claws were out and whistling through where my head would’ve been if I hadn’t been down. The touch burning inside my head like napalm in a barrel, a gush of black stinking acidic blood from the sudden shortness of his leg, I drove up with long muscles in my legs, left-hand malaika flicking again. His eyes were like pools of rancid oil, and the worst thing was he looked a little bit like Dibs. Golden-haired, with a soft babyface contorted in agony before my aspect flexed again and he fell, choking up a thin green-black scum.